“When I first encoun­tered Wright’s work as an eight-year-old boy, it was the space and the light that got me all excit­ed,” says Stu­art Graff in the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above. “I now under­stand why that gives us the feel­ing that it does, why we feel dif­fer­ent in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. That’s because he uses space and light to cre­ate this sense of inti­ma­cy with the world around us.” As luck would have it, Graff has grown up to become pres­i­dent and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion, and it is in that capac­i­ty that he leads us through one of the renowned Amer­i­can archi­tec­t’s last projects, a 1955 house along the Noro­ton Riv­er in New Canaan, Con­necti­cut called Tir­ran­na.

“While Tir­ran­na was being built, Wright was in New York City work­ing on his largest com­mis­sion, the Guggen­heim Muse­um,” says Graff. Also known as the Rayward–Shepherd House, Tir­ran­na is cer­tain­ly less wide­ly known than the Guggen­heim, and indeed, less wide­ly known than some of Wright’s oth­er res­i­den­tial work.

But as his pri­vate hous­es go, Tiran­na’s “set­ting rivals even per­haps Wright’s most famous work, Falling­wa­ter, in the way that house engages nature.” Built along a curve that “fol­lows the move­ment of the sun through the day” and tex­tured with con­trast­ing con­crete block and Philip­pine mahogany — not to men­tion plen­ty of glass through which to take in the land­scape out­side — it stands as a rich exam­ple of late Wright.

And rich is what you’d bet­ter be if you want to live it: accord­ing to a notice pub­lished in Archi­tec­tur­al Digest, Tir­ran­na went on the mar­ket last year for an ask­ing price of $8 mil­lion. Its 7,000 square feet make it one of Wright’s “largest and most expan­sive res­i­den­tial projects”; the “low-slung main home is designed in a hemi­cy­cle style — a unique­ly Wright shape — and fea­tures sev­en bed­rooms, eight bath­rooms, a rooftop obser­va­to­ry, and a wine cel­lar that has been con­vert­ed into a bomb shel­ter.” It even boasts the dis­tinc­tion of Wright him­self hav­ing stayed there, dur­ing the time he was still work­ing on the Guggen­heim. For a deep-pock­et­ed enthu­si­ast of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture, there could hard­ly be a more intrigu­ing prospect in New Canaan — as least since the Glass House isn’t for sale.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­pieces, Tal­iesin & Tal­iesin West

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japan­ese Mas­ter­piece, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo

What Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unusu­al Win­dows Tell Us About His Archi­tec­tur­al Genius

130+ Pho­tographs of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mas­ter­piece Falling­wa­ter

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Dog­house, His Small­est Archi­tec­tur­al Cre­ation (1956)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The very first sky­scraper went up in 1885 in Chica­go. It’s only nat­ur­al that such a brazen­ly ambi­tious form of build­ing would spring forth (or rather, up) from not just the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, but from that most aes­thet­i­cal­ly Amer­i­can of all metrop­o­lis­es. And though near­ly every world city now has high-ris­es on its sky­line (some of them only grudg­ing­ly tol­er­at­ed) the art of the sky­scraper has con­tin­ued to advance in the cap­i­tal of the Mid­west. Take 150 North River­side, fea­tured in the video above from Chica­go-based archi­tec­ture Youtu­ber Stew­art Hicks. Since its com­ple­tion in 2017, that 54-sto­ry tow­er has not just received crit­i­cal acclaim, but also the awe of onlook­ers to whom it seems like it should­n’t be able to stand at all.

“At its base, it’s almost like the tow­er’s been eat­en away, leav­ing its core behind,” Hicks says of its unusu­al shape. “You might think that this would make the entire build­ing struc­tural­ly unsta­ble — and you’d be right, if this fea­ture was­n’t com­pen­sat­ed for in the design and con­struc­tion process.” The engi­neer­ing involves mak­ing the arms of the Y‑shaped low­er lev­els “entire­ly out of steel. These ele­ments pre­car­i­ous­ly spring out of the con­crete core and trans­fer all of the loads of the out­side floors above. The forces are so great, these steel mem­bers are the largest I‑beams ever made,” spe­cial­ly designed and man­u­fac­tured for this project.

On the oth­er end sits a “tuned mass damper, which, fun­da­men­tal­ly, is just a giant con­crete water tank at the top of the build­ing.” When wind blows against the tow­er, caus­ing it to bend slight­ly, the water slosh­es around in response. “But the water moves slow­er than the build­ing does, so its weight is back over the orig­i­nal cen­ter of grav­i­ty,” which keeps the struc­ture from bend­ing too far. Though I’ve nev­er vis­it­ed 150 North River­side, I’ve seen a sim­i­lar mech­a­nism at work at the top of Taipei 101, the Tai­wanese cap­i­tal’s star sky­scraper, whose own tuned mass damper — enor­mous, spher­i­cal, and pen­du­lum-like — has become a favorite pho­to spot among tourists.

Hicks’ video also brought back an even ear­li­er mem­o­ry: that of Rainier Tow­er, a nine­teen-sev­en­ties office build­ing in Seat­tle whose taper­ing base impressed me in child­hood. Archi­tect Minoru Yamasa­ki (design­er, ear­li­er that decade, of the World Trade Cen­ter) used it in order “to main­tain as much free space at the base as pos­si­ble,” though it does tend to chan­nel winds with a Chica­go-like inten­si­ty. As for 150 North River­side, its per­ilous­ly tiny-look­ing foot­print result­ed from its lot, which offered a mere 35-foot-wide build­able space hemmed in by train tracks on one side and the Chica­go Riv­er on the oth­er. 150 North River­side stands, desir­ably, at the con­flu­ence of the river’s north and south branch­es — but also at the con­flu­ence of archi­tec­tur­al inge­nu­ity and the Chicagoan mon­ey­mak­ing spir­it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How a 1930s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­piece Har­ness­es the Sun to Keep Warm in the Win­ter & Cool in the Sum­mer

Why the Lean­ing Tow­er of Pisa Still Hasn’t Fall­en Over, Even After 650 Years

The Sto­ry of the Flat­iron Build­ing, “New York’s Strangest Tow­er”

Good­bye to the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er, Tokyo’s Strangest and Most Utopi­an Apart­ment Build­ing

Amaz­ing Aer­i­al Pho­tographs of Great Amer­i­can Cities Cir­ca 1906

10-Sto­ry High Mur­al of Mud­dy Waters Goes Up in Chica­go

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“Mod­ern archi­tec­ture died in St Louis, Mis­souri on July 15, 1972, at 3:32pm (or there­abouts).” This oft-quot­ed pro­nounce­ment by cul­tur­al and archi­tec­tur­al the­o­rist Charles Jencks refers to the demo­li­tion of the Wen­dell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apart­ments. The fate of that short-lived pub­lic hous­ing com­plex, bet­ter and more infa­mous­ly known as Pruitt-Igoe, still holds rhetor­i­cal val­ue in Amer­i­ca in argu­ments against the sup­posed social-engi­neer­ing ambi­tions made con­crete (often lit­er­al­ly) in large-scale post­war mod­ernist build­ings. Though the true sto­ry is more com­pli­cat­ed, the fact remains that, when­ev­er we pin­point it, mod­ern archi­tec­ture was wide­ly regard­ed as “dead.” What would come after it?

Why, post­mod­ernism, of course. Jencks did more than his part to define mod­ernism’s any­thing-goes suc­ces­sor move­ment with The Lan­guage of Post-Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture, in which he tells the tale of Pruitt-Igoe, which was then rel­a­tive­ly recent his­to­ry.

The first edi­tion came out in 1977, ear­ly days indeed in the life of post­mod­ernism, which in a video from His­toric Eng­land archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Elain Har­wood calls “the style of the nine­teen-eight­ies.” Its riots of delib­er­ate­ly incon­gru­ous shape and col­or, as well as its heaped-up unsub­tle cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, suit­ed that unbri­dled decade as per­fect­ly as did the ele­gant­ly gar­ish fur­ni­ture of the Mem­phis group.

In recent years, how­ev­er, the build­ings left behind by post­mod­ernism have got more than a few of us ask­ing ques­tions — ques­tions like, “Are they inten­tion­al­ly weird and tacky, or just designed with no taste?” That’s how Youtu­ber Bet­ty Chen puts it in the ARTic­u­la­tions video just above, before launch­ing into an inves­ti­ga­tion of post­mod­ern archi­tec­ture’s ori­gin, pur­pose, and place in the built envi­ron­ment today. In her telling, the style was born in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, when archi­tect Robert Ven­turi designed a rule-break­ing house for his moth­er in Philadel­phia, decid­ing “to dis­tort the pure order of the mod­ernist box by rein­tro­duc­ing dis­pro­por­tion­al arrange­ments of clas­si­cal ele­ments such as four-pane win­dows, arch­es, the ped­i­ment, and the dec­o­ra­tive dado.”

An impor­tant the­o­rist of post­mod­ernism as well as a prac­ti­tion­er (usu­al­ly work­ing in both roles with his wife and col­lab­o­ra­tor Denise Scott Brown), Ven­turi con­vert­ed arch-mod­ernist Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe’s dec­la­ra­tion that “less is more” into what would become, in effect, post­mod­ernism’s brief man­i­festo: “Less is a bore.” Ven­turi described him­self as choos­ing “messy vital­i­ty over obvi­ous uni­ty,” and the same could be said of a range of his col­leagues in the eight­ies and nineties: Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, and Charles Moore in Amer­i­ca; Also Rossi, Ricar­do Bofill, and Bernard Tschu­mi in Europe; Minoru Takeya­ma, Ken­go Kuma, and Ara­ta Isoza­ki in Japan.

Post­mod­ern archi­tec­ture flow­ered espe­cial­ly in Britain: “The irrev­er­ence came from Amer­i­ca, the clas­si­cism from Europe,” says Har­wood. “What British archi­tects did was weave those two ele­ments togeth­er.” As one of those archi­tects, Sir Ter­ry Far­rell, tells His­toric Eng­land, “the pre­ced­ing era had been earnest and anony­mous”; after inter­na­tion­al mod­ernism, the time had come to re-intro­duce per­son­al­i­ty, and in a flam­boy­ant man­ner. His col­league Piers Gough remem­bers feel­ing, in the mid-six­ties, a cer­tain envy for pop art — “they were doing col­or, they were doing pop­u­lar imagery, they had pret­ti­er girl­friends” — that inspired them to “ran­sack pop­u­lar imagery in archi­tec­ture.” This project posed cer­tain prac­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties of its own: “You can design a build­ing to look like a soup can, but the prob­lem real­ly comes when you put the win­dows in it.”

Ren­o­va­tions to many an aging post­mod­ern build­ing have proven dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy, giv­en that “irrev­er­ence and exag­ger­a­tion are out,” as Brock Keel­ing writes in a recent Bloomberg piece. “Sig­nif­i­cant post­mod­ern build­ings like the Abrams House in Pitts­burgh and the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art in San Diego have already been demol­ished,” and oth­ers are endan­gered: “Fans of the James R. Thomp­son Cen­ter — Hel­mut Jahn’s 1985 civic build­ing, not­ed for its sliced-off dome facade and 17-sto­ry atri­um with blue-and-salmon trim — fear it will deboned in prepa­ra­tion for Google’s new Chica­go head­quar­ters.” The true archi­tec­tur­al post­mod­ernism enthu­si­ast also appre­ci­ates much hum­bler works, such as Jef­frey Daniels’ Los Ange­les Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en fran­chise that unin­ten­tion­al­ly evokes of both a chick­en and a chick­en buck­et. Long may it stand.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Bob Dylan-Inspired Design­ers of David Bowie’s Favorite Fur­ni­ture

Why Peo­ple Hate Bru­tal­ist Build­ings on Amer­i­can Col­lege Cam­pus­es

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

An Intro­duc­tion to Post­mod­ernist Thinkers & Themes: Watch Primers on Fou­cault, Niet­zsche, Der­ri­da, Deleuze & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.